Official history of the world

“But I read a book written by one of the few people who were privileged enough to read and write, and things didn’t seem so bad!”

This is a real issue though. A lot of the writings on the actual lives of random people are from the perspective of “look what these weird foreigners do, instead of being normal like us”. And that’s not the most objective source.

This is what I dislike about most historical dramas. They focus almost entirely on the pampered (thought no doubt dramatic) lives of the rich and privileged, and lettered, ignoring the great majority of humanity that 1) were engaged every day with the drama of survival, 2) did all of the labour that allowed for those frilly few to write their letters all day.

EDIT: I write from the comfort of my home office on break at my WFH job… >_>

You can be angry, but being angry at things out of your control is not good for you.

We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.

Ursula K. LeGuin

There’s little that’s legitimately out of your control. Of course, I don’t mean 1 person can topple Capitalism or anything, but 1 person can set up a union, join a protest, or set up a co-operative farm, educate others, or make meaningful grassroots change.

1 person can make a big difference in the lives of the people around them.

One person can do something, but one person can’t do everything. If you are already running a farm co-op, leading a union, or so on, you simply don’t have the time to address the hundred other things you can see in the news in a single day. The point still stands, you can’t control everything, so even if you are making change on one or two points, you have to avoid being angry about the hundred other things you cannot.

It is, because nobody is willing to do what’s actually necessary. People talking about voting and protesting, that doesn’t do or mean shit.

Now if you set up the gallows and the BBQ to cook up the rich, I’m all for it and ready to help. That’s how you gonna get any real change.

I don’t think that was the point of the post.

It was more “Never fall for a ‘things were good back then’ narrative because actually shit sucked even more in the past”

aright cool nothing matters

Back in my day we worked 28 hours a day and didnt complain!!

(They put cocaine in coca cola and lead in the water)

…and could afford houses and food

But now I sound like I’m wearing the same rose-tinted glasses as the folks I was making fun of

… as long as they were white.

And the… non-WASPs knew their place. They loved it too in fact!

(I’m paraphrasing some actual things that actual people have actually said about the good old days (but I can’t remember their actual euphemisms (dysphemisms) for non-WASPs))

The ones I grew up around called them heathens.

It never occurred to me that I should be grateful to have heard “heathen” used only by history professors and sarcasts.

The Amazon reviews are really bad. If anyone is looking for a book with this same idea, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker is really great.

It’s not plagiarism if you plagiarize yourself! 😎👉👉

(Disclaimer: this is a joke, pls don’t tell hbomberguy I said the p word) (that was also a joke, no offense hburgerguy)

The other comments are quite sarcastic and I want to give you a bit of a less antagonizing response why Steven Pinker is kind of a hack.

He more or less “cooked the books” when it comes to explaining how much good capitalism helped the people around the world by doing very selective data analysis. In the end he really advocates for being complacent with the status quo and basically argues for the argument of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (which has been disproven a lot by anthropologists.

These videos are quite long but go into more detail:

And if you prefer to read: I’d recommend The Dawn of everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow.

Thanks for the information, I had no idea that Pinker had such an anti-following. I’ve not read or even thought about him in years. I just vaguely remembered that that book did a lot to make me more thankful for the current state of things compared to how they used to be. I appreciate you letting me know that he is such a questionable fellow.

Yep, I have found that just accepting one person’s words alone, especially in a field as politically charged as economics, is a terrible way to gain knowledge and understanding, just more misunderstanding. Pinker does a great job of being technically correct, but like the other commenters have pointed out, he is very careful of showing only some numbers and ignoring others, in order to massage a narrative that the status quo is flawed but ultimately not to be challenged.

Cool that you weren’t scared away by all the Toxicity in he other comments.

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://www.piped.video/watch?v=fo2gwS4VpHc

https://www.piped.video/watch?v=zwXV71hF7cs

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.

Yeah. Enjoy the meme. Don’t buy the book.

Love me some Steven Pinker. Should probably read one of his books. Does he do the reading of the audio books, does anyone know? He has lovely diction.

I didn’t know Amazon review score of books can get so low

In the past everything was better, even the future.

Karl Valentin

Rules:

Be civil and nice.
Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.

Official history of the world(web.archive.org)

Memes

!memes@lemmy.ml

Rules:

Community stats

Community moderators